


Circles

by Coolie



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, Humanstuck, Schoolstuck, casual mention of child abuse in chapter 3, goddd this fic is so bad i'm so sorry. i just took another look at it like, way later after i'd abandoned this and i'm so sorry oh my fucking god OTL
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-10
Updated: 2015-07-11
Packaged: 2018-04-08 15:39:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4310892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coolie/pseuds/Coolie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Meadow takes a profound interest in a boy from an entirely different social circle. But to her it's almost like he's from an entirely different world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Gotta Get To Class

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meadow's route is blocked! She's gonna be late!

The bell rings, and your club disassembles. The anime club always meets every other lunch time, this time it was Damali's turn to pick the anime. She ended up having to pick a different one. These school walls are paper thin you know.

Your name is Meadow Legion, you're a girl of average height who attends Alpha High, one of the only couple of highschools in your entire town.  
You have long brown hair that pools in a bunch of teased curls at about your mid waist, and big green eyes that almost disproportion your comical button nose and thin lips.

You slip your phone out of your school-sanctioned jacket pocket, a cutesy, old filp phone. A handmedown fro your mother, more specifically from your mother's own highschool days. It ought to be in a mew- MEUseum. You flip it open to look at your wallpaper, who, the smart girl you are, has set to your weekly timetable. Today is Tuesday, meaning after lunch you have P.E. You trounch down the hall amongst the usual stream of students and teachers and everyone, and slip out one of the side doors the Tuesday janitors leave unlocked.

Or, er. You _don't_. 

It's locked.  
_"Shit",_ you think to yourself.  
This was the only route you knew after your whole 3 years at this school, that would get you to this class without being late.  
You look flustered as you step away from the door and back into the, now now more sparcely filled, an uneasy sign of your impeding "late" note left on the roll, and walk down, towards the back entrance of the school, which would lead out to the field.

As you walk along you can't help but focus on how you walk. You can barely hear it, despite how your mother notes your apaprent heavy footedness. You enphasise the silence in your head. You appease yourself with thoughts of being so light your feet don't make a sound. Like a kittycat! You absolutely love those.  
Lost in your train of thought over cute cats, you nearly smack into the door, you catch yourself before you do, and push down on the handle to open it.  
You peer out, your wide eyes naked to the open world before you, and at that you see the same field, the same.. Dirty grey. Of the concrete. You walk down the stairs, and you glance at the left, assumingly to see the carpark, with all the assorted cars of teachers and older students,  
but instead you lock eyes with one of the ruffians who skip classes by the dumpsters.

His shocking purple eyes send chills to your spine, does he wear contacts? You only glanced at him for a moment before trancing off to your class, but you take in his entire appearance, wild black hair, it covered his eyebrows. You had no idea what his expression really was. He was tall and thin and bony. Like s the science room skeleton.  
Not even to mention the most outlandish of his focal points, he, amongst other people in this school (... Asumingly acquainted with him?) smear their faces with grease paints.  
His however, unlike the others, wasn't apparently random circles, like butterflies made of wet paint and paper in kindergarden,  
but very obviously reminiscent of a skull.


	2. The Grapevine Gossip

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mina unveils some startling news...

"hey mea"   
Mina had just sent you a text. "youre in that anime club whateva, rite?"   
That's odd. Mina never talks to you about your clubs. How did she even know you were in this one? Did you tell her?   
You don't remember doing that. "Mhm!" You reply, only to recieve a prompt response,   
"i hear its probubbly gonna break up"   
"What?" You're dumbfounded. Is Meenah kidding you? It seems weird to just bring this up out of the blue..   
  
"ruf and dams broke up, apparently they got in a big fight and dams got suspended"   
Your brow creases and you make a face. Rufioh and Damara were such a nice couple.. You totally shipped them.   
"OMG! That sucks (=;ェ;=) but why's the group disbanding?? Damurra and Rufioh CO-ran it, can't Rufioh just take over?"   
Mina doesn't respond as quickly, you ponder for a moment with your open question, until;   
  
"uh" Mina replied!! "rufs in hospital" What!? "he kinda cant yo"   
Wait. Did they have a fight as in... A FIGHT fight?   
"OMG oh no! I didn't know you meant.. An actual fight! I thought they just had a falling out!! I hope he's ok!!!!!!!!! ~(=^T x T^)"   
Mina just responds with a simple "yea" before your phone gets snatched out of your hand. It's the Science teacher.   
He's such a fuddy duddy. At least you have the dirt on what's up on the grape vine, albeit it's not exactly good. Looks like you'll need to find something else to do every other lunch time.   
  
Your beloved club is no more.


	3. The Fight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A fight takes place and Meadow witnesses the end portion of it.

You returned to your schoolwork, eventually the class wrapped up after what felt like ages. Years. A whole millenia of Science class. The bell rings, and you pack your books neatly into your cute backpack and trail out the door.  
There's a loud noise. It's... Indescribable? It's faint but.. Really near. You focus on it past that annoying buzzing you get every common often, it's coming from down the hall. It's like.. People yelling? Shouting? You're almost scared to run down and look, yet you do. The buzzing gets louder, you can't even hear the already faint noises of your feet across the stiff, cold linoleum of the school hall, clogged, not like usual, but just. Completely halted. At a stop. You push your way through ambient, inertia riddled students and find the biggest knot in the chain of pupils, crowded around a scene, the source of the yelling.  
It's hard to see past the impenetrable wall of bystanders, a mix of the rougher students, as well as.. A couple of those boys.. (A a few stray girls,) the ones with the grease paint. They're closest, and formed a strong chain encircling and cheering the scene anonymous to yourself, you duck your head around the students, trying to attempt to not draw attention to yourself-  
  
Oh god, it's a fight. It's a real fight. You've never seen an actual fight, you've heard they're pretty common in the city amongst teens like yourself.. Well, not you, yourself. Other kids. Hell, even Natalie, your sister, has gotten in a scrap, albeit not nearly as serious as this.  
You can't even really make out who's fighting, it's a boy with slicked back, black hair, his nose looks broken and he's on the ground, his lip is cut and there's... Blood. On his shirt and around his face. He looks familiar.

A lightbulb goes off in your mind, that's Cronos, he's in your Literary class. Also the source of most of the yelling, as he gets beat on continuously. And the other boy... The one, towering ABOVE Cronos, the one with Cronos' blood on his hands, and still laying into him, unreceeding.. You don't think you know him. Well, you can't really get a good look at him, all you can see of him is he's tall and lanky, and when he ducks down to wail into your classmate, you can see he has a mass of knotted and wild hair. His face isn't apparently flesh coloured either. He's probably from the same group as the people closely ensnaring the fight and preventing bystanders getting in the way, probably, meaning it's probably just grease paint like them.  
You're powerless to step in and stop this. It burns to be so helpless, you're always getting involved with things between a closed group, even unsavoury things, of course. You're such a meddler. But not right now. Right now all you can do is bare witness to what's happening, you'd turn and high-tail it out of here, but the groups lingering behind have condensced further, and anyways. As an avid grower of the Grapevine, the gossip channels of the school, and also the name of the school newspaper, it wouldn't be right to not know about what will probably be one of the talks of the town for a while. Well, considering the frequency of fights here, probably more like a couple days.

  
Or maybe you were intrigued. Excited by such an alien event.  
No. No you're not. Fights get kids in trouble, and you're a straight A... Well, straight B student, no good pupil is interested in roughhousing! You're merely witnessing this to relay information on later. Totally.  
The painted marauder ducks down and grips Cronos by his shirt collar, and hoists him up so he's standing, shaken, on his own two feet, he looks almost relieved, maybe it's all over. That's not the reality though, as his assailant brings his fist back and punches him straight between his eyes, a crack is heard, and a couple winces from the crowd. If Cronos' nose wasn't broken when you arrived, it certainly was now.  
Cronos is released, and slumps to the ground. As if dead. Obviously not. To be frank you've heard of him getting his ass handed to him a couple times from his dad, the reconts seemingly more brutal than this, by far. The assailant stands idle as he combs his hair back, the grease paint his face is adorned with is smeared, and there's blood coming from the side of his mouth. You wonder if that's the same blood, his blood you mean, on his shirt. Or if it came from Cronos. As greousome as it is, you still thought it, and it worried you why.   
  
At least now you get a good look at the boy's face, purrfect for a recount to the tabloids-  
You blink, wait, this boy, you've seen him before. You swear you hear the noise of what an exclaimation point would sound like pronounced as a singular over the annoying buzzing which is thankfully fading. You saw him the other day when you were on your way to PE! Which you.. Were totally late for. You were grilled so hard. One of the boy's shocking purple contacts seems to have fallen out, and you get a glimpse of his natural eye colour, a dark brown. Almost black. Or was it black? Is that possible?? Before he slips out of the circle, the other students instictivly making a pathway for him, a few persons away from yourself, and his menacing assosciates as he walks out of sight, leaving students to investigate Cronos.  
Someone apparently must have called for a teacher, because one came bouncing into the area where the fight once was. Took him long enough, it's already over.


	4. Quiet

You wake up to your mom jostling your shoulder. It's so quiet out. You turn over to look at her, and she just flaps her mouth like a fish, you laugh, a strange motion of laughing rather, you can't make the noise for some reason, and she points at her watch. You blink at her, and she blinks back. She flaps her mouth again, why is she doing that?   
"Mom," you call out. Or you try. Why can't you speak? "Mom what are you doing?" Your mother stares at you, profound disbelief in her face, she goes wide eyed and pale, she flaps her lips again, then leaves the room. That was weird. You just go back to sleep, only to be reawoken by your mother whos holding a notepad. On it is written;  
  
"Meadow can you hear?"  
  
That's a silly question, there's no noise in the first place! If anything you just can't speak! You take the notepad from her and write beneath her words, "Hear what?"  
Youre then enveloped in the softness of your mom's sweater arms as she pulls you close. You feel a bit of dampness on your shoulder.. Is she crying? You put a hand on her and ask,  
  
"Mom, what's wrong?"  
  
She doesn't reply. But then your sister comes in, she looks cranky like she'd just been woken up, she makes the stupid lip flapping motions too. Your mom tears away from you and goes over to kneel by Natalie, your dear lil sister, and says something to her. It must be really quiet, too, since you can't.   
It hits you that you haven't heard anything since you woke up. Typically your alarm clock wakes you up. The birds weren't singing like usual. You couldn't hear your family trying to talk to you oh my god. Oh my god, you've gone deaf.

You're shaking as you reach up to your ears.  You stroke them. As if to try coaxing them to work, it's too quiet. Everything is too quiet. You crave for the familial noises to hear your mother and sister, you won't ever hear them again and you feel like crying. You can't be deaf. You can't be!! You feel a trickle of tears fall down your face and you bury your head into you hands. This is the worst. This is THE worst. The SINGLE WORST day of your life! 

You feel something weighted on your legs and look up, it's your sister, you smile at her as if she were a kitten who just climbed up. She wraps her arms around you, and you think she tried to say something. You two hug for what seems like a long time, you can't imagine letting go ever and you don't want to. You don't want to go through life outside of this embrace with Natalie, you could happily do this until you died of starvation. You can't do that though, as much as you wish. You have to keep going now, this is your life now.

You are Meadow Legion, and you are now deaf.

**Author's Note:**

> My first attempt at fanfiction, any constructive feedback would be taken gratiously.


End file.
